The activation of ERK1/2 and p38 mitogen‐activated protein kinases is dynamically regulated in the developing rat visual system

Abstract

Mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs) are serine/threonine kinases that play an instrumental role in signal transduction from the cell surface to the nucleus. These enzymes are major intracellular mediators of developmental events and recently have been shown to control also synaptic plasticity processes [Sweatt, J.D., 2004. Mitogen-activated protein kinases in synaptic plasticity and memory. Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 14, 311-317; Thomas, G.M., Huganir, R.L., 2004. MAPK cascade signalling and synaptic plasticity. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 5, 173-183]. Mammalian members of this family are extracellular signal-regulated kinases 1/2 (ERK 1/2), c-Jun amino-terminal kinases or stress-activated protein kinases (JNK/SAPKs) and p38 kinases (p38(MAPK)). At the level of the visual system, it has been demonstrated that the ERK pathway regulates developmental plastic processes at both retino-thalamic and thalamo-cortical level and that p38(MAPK) controls a peculiar form of long-term depression in the visual cortex [Di Cristo, G., Berardi, N., Cancedda, L., Pizzorusso, T., Putignano, E., Ratto, G.M., Maffei, L., 2001. Requirement of ERK activation for visual cortical plasticity. Science 292, 2337-2340; Naska, S., Cenni, M.C., Menna, E., Maffei, L., 2004. ERK signaling is required for eye-specific retino-geniculate segregation. Development 131, 3559-3570; Xiong, W., Kojic, L.Z., Zhang, L., Prasad, S.S., Douglas, R., Wang, Y., Cynader, M.S., 2006. Anisomycin activates p38 MAP kinase to induce LTD in mouse primary visual cortex. Brain Res. 1085, 68-76]. Here, as a first approach to gain more insight on the role of two MAPKs - ERK1/2 and p38(MAPK) - in visual system maturation, we characterized by western blot the regulation of their phosphorylation/activation in rat retina, superior colliculus and visual cortex, during postnatal development from birth to adult age. Our main results show that: (i) in the retina p38(MAPK) activation peaks at P4, and then, from P15 to P45, both ERK1/2 and p38(MAPK) phosphorylation increases; (ii) in the superior colliculus phosphorylation of both MAPKs increases between P4 and P15; (iii) in the visual cortex ERK1/2 phosphorylation increases from P15 to P45, while phosphorylation of p38(MAPK) increases starting from P4. The present data demonstrate a distinct regulation of the activation of ERK1/2 and p38(MAPK) in the three visual areas analyzed which occurs in temporal correlation with critical events for visual system maturation. These results suggest an important role for ERK1/2 and p38(MAPK) in the postnatal development of the rat visual system.

Molecular characterization and immunohistochemical localization of a mitogen-activated protein kinase, Accp38b, from Apis cerana cerana

“…Therefore, it is plausible that Accp38b is involved in signal transduction in the visual system. A similar observation has been reported for the rat p38 MAPK, which functions in the developing visual system (22). To our knowledge, this data offers the first insight into the function of p38 MAPK in light-related signal transduction in the visual system.…”

Anisomycin suppresses Jurkat T cell growth by the cell cycle-regulating proteins

“…Many studies show that anisomycin can activate p38, ERK1/2 or JNK in MAPK family, which is dependent on the cell types [18]. Recently, it has been discovered that anisomycin induces macrophage apoptosis in rabbit atherosclerotic plaques through p38 signalling [8], significantly influencing reactivity of lymphocytes [21,23,27] and inhibiting activation and proliferation of Jurkat T cells stimulated by PMA and ionomycin to induce apoptosis of Jurkat T cells [19], while its concrete mechanism remains to be clarified.…”

Loss of MAP3K1 enhances proliferation and apoptosis during retinal development

“…In Drosophila, the Ras, PAK, Raf, TAK and MAPK are all implicated in photoreceptor differentiation (Dickson et al, 1995;Halfar et al, 2001;Menzel et al, 2007;Mihaly et al, 2001); however, a Drosophila MAP3K1 is yet to be identified. In mammals, many signaling factors are found activated in temporal correlation with crucial events of retina maturation, but their roles in retinal cell fate determination remain poorly understood (Oliveira et al, 2008). So far, the mammalian ASK1-p38 pathway is linked to post-mitotic cell apoptosis (Campos et al, 2006;Harada et al, 2006), whereas the PI3K-AKT pathway mediates cell survival (O'Driscoll et al, 2006).…”

“…The growth factorstimulated signaling pathways, such as the MAPK cascades, have been shown to modulate RB and E2F activities in the context of cell cycle progression of cancer (Downward, 1997), but their interactions with the RB-E2F axis in retina development have not been well understood (Oliveira et al, 2008). In this paper, we focused on investigating the role of MAP3K1 in retina development.…”